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This week’s post features a strong shot of irony. South Dakota ranks 49th of 51 jurisdictions (50 states plus the District of Columbia) in ACEEE’s 2014 Energy Efficiency Scorecard report, yet its citizens overwhelmingly support wind power. And when I say they support wind power, they act on it – not “yes, I love itRead more

Politics exert major forces on energy policies and fortunately, few oppose energy efficiency. Therefore, I strongly suggest our industry build high walls around energy efficiency and not let controversial things like climate change and even in some cases, renewable energy, into our sandbox. Case in point: this recent opinion piece by a guy from theRead more

How many times have you read “we can create 40 million jobs and reduce our energy consumption by 90% if only we did x, y, and z.” Lester in this article says by 2035 we can double our fuel economy. Well I should hope so! Lester is actually one guy that is conservative in hisRead more

As you may have heard, this year China powered past (cheesy pun warning) the United States in total energy consumption. Apparently, back in 2007, they surpassed the US in carbon emissions. This makes sense as almost 70% of China’s electricity is derived from coal as compared to just under 50% in the United States. InRead more

“Green jobs” have been all the buzz for quite some time, probably before Barack Obama was elected president, but I don’t know for sure. What the heck is a green job anyway? Some real answers include those like we have at Michaels Engineering with 20+ engineers working full time on real energy-saving projects. Another exampleRead more

The masses want power on demand without interruption or failure. They want it at a practically negligible cost and more so every year, they want it without emissions or other unpleasant byproducts. In the upper Midwest, energy without emissions means wind energy. Wind energy sounds great. It’s “free”. No emissions. But it comes with aRead more

“There should be a place for these — someplace that isn’t going to impact families quite so much.” This was a quote regarding wind turbines from a woman in the Wall Street Journal article Renewable Energy, Meet the New Nimby. I laughed out loud for a while when I read this California has a mandateRead more

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